Bipolar disorder is a brain disorder that causes extreme shifts in a person's mood, thought, energy, behavior, and ability to function. For many individuals, the onset of bipolar disorder will develop in childhood or adolescence. Unfortunately, the disorder is not always viewed as an illness, and many people suffer for years before an accurate diagnosis is obtained. In some cases, patients with childhood-onset bipolar disorder can experience an average 16.8 year lag between symptom onset and treatment. During that time, patients are often incorrectly diagnosed with major depressive disorder and consequently prescribed psychotropic medication that fails to remedy the bipolar disorder.
Despite the prevalence and severity of bipolar disorder, its neurochemical basis remains obscure. Improvement in diagnosing pediatric bipolar disorder is a critical barrier to progress in the field. One approach in diagnosing pediatric bipolar disorder is to identify neuroimaging biological markers (“biomarkers”) that reflect the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder. Without such objective biomarkers, diagnostic accuracy for bipolar disorder remains limited.